All things considered, of the three, the third explanation seemed most likely. I had a seminary professor who used to warn us all about the danger of empire building. He was exactly right. As I sat in his office, he would recount stories of this fellow and that who had trampled on old friends as they sought to build a (religious) empire (his word) of some sort. He noted how pastors do it. He warned about the problems inherent to the church growth movement, which was in full swing, and the Reformed celebrity culture before it really existed.

A friend and I were talking recently about a mutual friend, who had been a pastor and a strong advocate for the Reformation doctrines of sola scriptura (according to Scripture alone), sola gratia (by grace alone), and sola fide (through faith alone). Suddenly, however,  this fellow did, as people say, a “180,” i.e., his theology seemed to change 180 degrees. Where before he was advocating the Reformation theology now, (this was decades ago), he began advocating the doctrine of salvation whereby we are “in by [baptismal] grace,” and “stay in by cooperation [works] with grace.” There were other dramatic changes. They seemed to come out of the blue and were hard to understand theologically. Why would someone trade in the glorious, liberating doctrine of salvation by the favor of God, merited for the elect by Christ alone, received through faith alone  for a doctrine of salvation by grace and cooperation with grace? After all, the Reformers rejected that very doctrine as a the Galatian error of salvation through works and a contradiction of Paul’s teaching in Romans 11:6—”But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” The Reformers recovered the clear biblical teaching that grace is God’s favor, his approval and free acceptance, of his people for Christ’s sake alone. Grace is not a medicinal divine or quasi-divine substance with which we are infused. They recovered Paul’s and Augustine’s doctrine that, in the fall, we are by nature utterly corrupt and unable to save ourselves (Rom 1–3; 4:17; Eph 2:1–10). With Augustine, they not only rejected sheer Pelagianism (the denial that we all fell with Adam) but semi-Pelagianism, i.e., the doctrine that though we fell in Adam we are not so sinful that we cannot “do our part” and cooperate with grace sufficiently unto justification and final salvation.

With Augustine, they realized that any such doctrine put us sinners back under the law and that, as sinners, we are never going to be able to cooperate sufficiently with the law unto salvation. In other words, they realized that the semi-Pelagian doctrine leaves us in our sins and trespasses. It corrupts the gospel  “since we have been justified by faith” (Rom 5:1) and “we have now been justified by his blood” (Rom 5:9) and “[t]here is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1), that Christ “justifies the ungodly” (Rom 4:5), and that we are justified “by faith apart from the works of the law” (Rom 3:28; Gal 2:16).

Why would someone make such a dramatic and apparently sudden change? I suppose that we will never really know. Only God knows the secrets of the human heart (Ps 44:21). Over time, however, some patterns have emerged as I have observed similar cases. When people do things that just do not make sense the answer is usually money, sex, or power. All things considered, of the three, the third explanation seemed most likely. I had a seminary professor who used to warn us all about the danger of empire building. He was exactly right. As I sat in his office, he would recount stories of this fellow and that who had trampled on old friends as they sought to build a (religious) empire (his word) of some sort. He noted how pastors do it. He warned about the problems inherent to the church growth movement, which was in full swing, and the Reformed celebrity culture before it really existed.

Perhaps, however, power is not a complete explanation. We may add nuance to the answer when we consider the human need for acceptance and community.

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